Forty Years, Same Corner

With a blast of her whistle, Estelle Davis raised a white-gloved hand and held back a column of oncoming cars bearing down on a group of schoolchildren ambling across the street.

“Come on, baby,” she said, ushering a straggler through the rush-hour traffic.

Ms. Davis has been a New York City Police Department crossing guard at the same location — the southwest corner of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and 145th Street in Harlem — for more than 40 years.

“This is my corner,” Ms. Davis said, looking out over the meeting of the two broad, busy streets. “I’ve never heard of any other crossing guard covering the same corner that long.”

Ms. Davis oversees her crosswalks on weekdays during the school year. She meticulously records her three shifts a day — morning, lunchtime and afternoon — in a leather-bound log book that is as much a part of her uniform as her yellow safety vest, white gloves and cap.

She is one of the most senior of the roughly 2,400 crossing guards that help pedestrians navigate New York City intersections, primarily around schools.

The job requires the grit to stand up to honking hordes of motor vehicles, and the tenderness to deal with the walking public, for an hourly wage that ranges from $12 for rookies to $14 for veterans.

Ms. Davis is vigilant against cars trying to turn recklessly into the crosswalk and is especially attentive to talkative teens and oblivious little ones. She often dispenses a hug and a symbolic push toward the curb.

A Harlem resident herself, Ms. Davis lives two blocks away from her post, and has trained most of the other local crossing guards.

“You can see this is a busy corner, so they stick the new ones with me and I show them the ropes,” she said. “My sergeant brings them down their first day and after a day they’re on their own.”

It’s no surprise that Ms. Davis seems to know most of the people who pass by her.

“She’s a neighborhood institution,” said Kevin Dukes, 61, who lives nearby. “To a lot of us, she’s like a second mother. Everyone knows Ms. Davis.”

It’s a social job, and can take a physical toll, sometimes.

“I say hello to hundreds of people a day, and sometimes I get so tired, I just hold up my hand,” she said. “I get grown-ups who I used to cross when they were kids and now I’m crossing their kids, or even their grandkids. On my birthday, people give me gifts.”

Ms. Davis said she was born 1933 in Orangeburg, S.C.

“I grew up on a big farm, working in cotton fields,” she said. “We didn’t need crossing guards there.”

She said she moved to Manhattan as a young woman and worked for years in a hat factory in Greenwich Village. After it closed, she became a crossing guard.

Ms. Davis said she was a widow with six children, 11 grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren. There are a lot of young relatives for her to enjoy, but she has a rule.

“I don’t babysit,” she said. “Not unless there’s an emergency.”

She prides herself on rarely missing work, even in the worst weather. “If I miss one day, these kids will have a fit,” she said, adding, “If I sat up in that apartment all day, I’d be just as nutty as a fruitcake.”

She sings with the choir at Greater Emmanuel Baptist Church on East 118th Street. She passes slow moments during her shift humming church songs.

One day, she said, she will return to the family farm down south. “When I do retire, my sergeant said they’re going to put my name up on a plaque here on my corner.”

On a recent weekday, she said hello to a neighborhood resident, T.J. Jeter.

“She uplifts everybody she comes in contact with,” Ms. Jeter said. “She could have retired years ago, but she’d rather make a difference on this corner. From generation to generation, everybody knows her. She’s stepped into fights and riots and calmed things down just by giving people a look.”

At one point, Ms. Davis calmly guided a group of children through a tangle of vehicles blocking the crosswalk, and then returned to the sidewalk with an energetic dance step and her arms swinging.

“I got nothing but energy,” she said. “I’m still out here because I love it. Why else are you going to work the same corner for 40 years?”

Finishing her morning shift, she hooked her white gloves onto her belt and somehow noticed a young boy stepping into the busy street behind her.